Tag Archives: shoulders

A friend of ours sent us a link to a short piece about stuttering and singing as something that has proven helpful for some. After Emma and I read the piece I asked Emma what she thought. Emma wrote, “Singing is the only time words come easily.”

When Emma was very young many of her therapists would sing various songs to her, but usually repeated the same ones, “Head, shoulders, knees and toes” and “The wheels on the bus” being the two that feature most prominently in my memory of that period. I was curious about Emma’s memory about those songs and so asked her.

“The mistake people made was in not using music more. Music was more beneficial than anything else,” Emma wrote.

“Even though you couldn’t articulate the few words you spoke back then, I’m talking about when you were just two and three years old, you loved singing and sang a lot. Did you understand the meaning of the words of the songs you would sing?” I asked.

Emma wrote, “Yes.”

Did you purposefully choose songs that communicated what you were feeling?

“Music conveyed my feelings more than anything else. I might feel something that no words can describe. Music is the language of the soul,” Emma wrote.

Yesterday Richard, Emma and I were discussing consciousness, thinking and different ways of communicating our thoughts. Emma wrote, “Can you think about how I sense the world and then try not to use words? My pacifist’s stance is the only way. Fighting requires words, pacifism does not.”

Richard then asked, “Are you saying that from your perspective you see all intelligence as being linked and one, and we, who use words, fight because we cannot see and understand this?”

Emma wrote, “You are trying to define knowledge and intelligence with inadequate words. Intelligence is not word based. Music and words used in song come closest.”